More than 800,000 ceramic poppies were made as part of a display called 'Blood Swept Lands And Seas Of Red', and each one represents the death of a British or Commonwealth serviceman during WWI.

The officer commanding the Mackay Army cadets, Major John Zimmermann says the poppies on display are the only ones he is aware of in Mackay, and quite possibly throughout all of the cadet units in Queensland.

"In the environment that we are in, we are rather familiar with military items and military equipment and we thought it would be nice to have something different and certainly something meaningful in the 100th year of Anzac," Major Zimmermann said.

Each poppy is unique

Major Zimmermann says following the display in London, the poppies became available for sale online and he ordered them to be a part of a permanent display for the cadets in Mackay.

"Each poppy is individually handmade, so no two are the same and the two we have here are quite different," he explained.

"But certainly since we had this display established and are now getting rather prominent items of memorabilia from the First World War, rarely a night that goes by when you don't walk into the room and there are not cadets crowded around having a look and taking in what is there.

"I think in this day and age, a lot of what happens is sanitised and I don't think anyone can truly understand what it would have been like to have been there and at some stages I think it truly was rivers of blood."

He added that the timing in which they received the poppies has worked quite well because the cadets had recently returned from an Anzac expedition.

"We took 48 [cadets] from Mackay and also some of some from New Zealand on a expedition, and part of it was through the War Memorial in Canberra and they had to research their relatives as part of that, and then these poppies go and turn up ... so for some of them it was quite a meaningful link," he said.

The display in Mackay is for local cadets and their parents, but Major Zimmermann says he has no objection if people want to contact him and have a look.